Yesterday I was asked not once, but twice, about how someone could convince another person to join WWers – one was asking about a colleague at work and the other was a mother asking about her daughter; both were concerned about the other person’s health and state of mind. Since I have at least a passing acquaintance with these two people, I know for a fact that they were motivated by a sincere desire to be helpful. In addition, both of these ladies have been successful themselves at losing weight.

But as you know if you ever tried – you can’t really ever convince another person to voluntarily do something they don’t want to. You might coerce or trick or cajole them into it temporarily, but it won’t last. And when it comes to weight…well telling someone that they should do something about theirs is a losing argument from the get go.

As I’ve written before, despite all of the people in my own family with weight issues, not one of them believes that they should address it, least of all by doing what I’ve been doing – attending meetings and following a program of healthy lifestyle change and group support. The way my family sees it, I might as well have joined some kind of bizarre cult. They’ll talk about diets and surgery and special exercise programs until they’re blue in the face. But what I’m doing? Crazy.

So anyway, with these two ladies yesterday I was compassionate and polite and basically punted. I said that “given everything I have been through in my life, I have no value judgements about what anyone else weighs – I care a lot about helping people be healthy, but I don’t feel comfortable deciding which person ‘should be helped.’ “ I thought of some better responses later, but that’s what I came up with on the fly.

At the same time, I do wonder if maybe I’m being too politically correct, too reluctant to reach out. I feel torn about it. Just as I feel that being an Episcopalian is so awesome and I wish more people could know about everything we do and the spiritual path we follow – and yet I never, ever mention that to people I know. I just don’t want to be seen as some kind of pushy evangelist. “I know what’s right and what’s wrong so listen to me.”

I’m not sure what I would have done if at any point in my life anyone had ever asked me to go to a WWer meeting. Since no one ever did, I can’t exactly imagine it. Maybe if they had said something like “come along with me for the moral support” I might have done it. Maybe not. But I’m sure I would have resented it if the implication was that I needed to do something about being so heavy. I spent a lot of time in denial!

In the end, I don’t know. It’s taken me a long time to “come out” to people as a meeting leader and I even now I feel ambivalent talking about it at work or social occasions. That probably says more about the feelings and ideas that I’m projecting, I suppose. Perhaps if I just stood up with confidence and self-assuredness about what I do, it would come across as an attractive possibility.

Or not.